Dual- and quad-core 'Penryn' CPUs benchmarked

IDF How might processors based on Intel's upcoming 45nm 'Penryn' architecture perform when compared to today's 65nm CPUs? The chip giant today posted test results to give us an indication of what to expect the Core 2 upgrade hits the market.

The tests were carried out on a pre-production Intel D975XBX2 motheerboard with a pre-production BIOS installed. Alongside the processor, the company connected an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX card from Asus running version 100.65 of Nvidia's drivers. 2GB of Corsair 800MHz DDR 2 memory set to 5-5-5-15 and a 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm hard drive were fitted, and the whole lot was running the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate.

Three processors were tested: dual- and quad-core Penryns running at 3.33GHz over a 1333MHz frontside bus, and a four-core 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6800 sitting on a 1066MHz bus. Here are the numbers:

It's worth pointing out that Half-life 2 runs in a single thread, which is why dual- and quad-core Penryns yield the same score. Cinebench 9.5 does not support SSE 2 and above. Only the DivX test incorporated SSE 4 support.

In most - but not all - cases the 45nm quad-core shows a percentage lead well over that provided by the 13.7 per cent increase in clock speed.

While these numbers were provided by Intel, they were generated in tests observer by Register Hardware, though we didn't get to examine the systems' internals. CPU-Z confirmed the clock speeds.